Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940) | Directed by Norman Taurog

 4/5

Norman Taurog’s Broadway Melody of 1940 is so much better than a film with such a generic title has any right to be. Sure, the plot is thin and the characters only sketches of real people, but when you have Fred Astaire singing, dancing, and playing the piano (at the same time no less!), who need a plot or characters? It continues to be refreshing to find classic musicals in which the plot doesn’t revolve around a pushy or stalker-y romantic pursuit. Here, the plot revolves around a misunderstanding and everyone’s genuinely good-natured attempts to do the right thing. There’s nothing revolutionary here, but it’s charming, delightful, and incredibly winsome.

Where to Watch

The Ghost Ship (1943) | Directed by Mark Robson

 3.5/5

Mark Robson’s The Ghost Ship is a moody and atmospheric little nautical thriller that I enjoyed so much more than I expected. The film presents us with two competing views of humanity – people are terrible and need to be governed by a stern authority, contrasted with the belief that people are essentially good and just need to be reminded of their basic goodness. It’s a simple dialectic, but one that is made terrifyingly concrete in the personage of Captain Stone, a man who believes that he and he alone has the authority of life and death over the souls on his ship. This tyrannical belief in a privileged elite’s “boundless wisdom” and superior standing feels all-too-relevant in today’s corporate and political oligarchy. While it’s still a b-movie, the black-and-white cinematography is rich and textured, the depth of shadow and play of light lending a visual poetry to the film that makes it even more compelling.

Profound Desires of the Gods (1968) | Directed by Shohei Imamura

 3.5/5

Shohei Imamura’s Profound Desires of the Gods is a confounding, mysterious, and utterly captivating film that explores the tensions between modernity and tradition, the individual and the community, and the past and present. With its nearly three-hour running time and sprawling narrative, I had hoped that the multiple story threads would have come together more seamlessly, but there’s a messy chaos to characters’ appearances and disappearances that prevents the film from ever feeling as rich or satisfying as it could have been. Still, the ways in which Imamura transposes ancient myth into a modern setting is deeply compelling, as is the tragic portrait of a deeply flawed family shackled to tradition. Imamura’s haunting images and eerie soundscape will remain with me for a long while – this is definitely a film to which I will return as I explore more of Imamura’s filmography.

This review was generously supported by Patreon Supporter Michael Hutchins.

T-Men (1947) | Directed by Anthony Mann

 3/5

If it wasn’t for the heavy-handed narration that permeates Anthony Mann’s T-Men, we’d have a taut little police procedural on our hands. As it is, the voice-over keeps us at a distance and prevents us from ever fully engaging with the characters or the story. Otherwise, the story of Treasury Agents on the trail of counterfeiters is a fairly compelling bit of b-movie action. Most impressive is the film’s willingness to wind through some dark corners into a surprising moment of tragedy that significantly ups the stakes and finally gets us onto the edge of our seats for the finale. The cinematography is gorgeous – deep shadows fill the frame and the steam in scenes set within a bathhouse feel rich and textured. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a very fun, light film that’s perfect to throw on at the end of a long day.

The Inland Sea (1991) | Directed by Lucille Carra

 4.5/5

Lucille Carra’s The Inland Sea is a surprisingly lovely and deeply meditative piece of creative nonfiction. Following a the journey through Japan’s inland sea that film scholar Donald Richie took in 1971, the film is part travelogue, part meditation on what it means to be human. It’s refreshing to see a Westerner with such rigid ideas of what authentic Japanese culture looks like confront his own colonialist mindset. Instead of seeking some romanticized (and exoticized) version of authentic Japanese people, Richie must reflect on how he can be authentic and truly himself as he lives as a foreigner, as the other. It’s a short film, but lovely and unexpectedly moving.

This capsule review was generously sponsored by Nick Evert.

Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) | Directed by Richard Attenborough

 4.5/5

Richard Attenborough’s directorial debut, Oh! What a Lovely War, is right in my cinematic sweet spot. Highly theatrical, with a touch of the absurd and Brechtian distancing techniques, the film sets major events of World War I within a boardwalk-style amusement park. The carnivalesque atmosphere highlights the grotesqueries of nationalism and wartime propaganda, and the ways in which world leaders causally throw away the lives of their people like they’re playing a game is horrifying. The film is filled with musical numbers, actual songs sung by soldiers during the war that parody patriotic numbers, hymns, or barroom melody. The ghastly lyrics provide a sharp counterpoint to the jaunty melodies and heightens the sense of the soldiers’ mortality. As intellectual and heady as the film may seem, the final sequence is overwhelmingly sad as we’re forced to reckon with all of the lives lost in this and every war.

Stalag 17 (1953) | Directed by Billy Wilder

 3.5/5

Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 is filled with tonal dissonances that never quite gel in the way his best films (The Apartment, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard) do. As high as the stakes may be at the outset, the broad comedy throughout the remainder of the film keeps those stakes from feeling real. Unlike some of the great WWII POW films, most of the characters are either too bland to tell apart from the others, or such over-the-top caricatures that they (and their hijinks) feel out-of-place in this life-and-death situation. Still, Wilder is a master filmmaker, and his direction elevates the middling narrative with light, fluid camerawork and a fast-paced banter that clips along in spite of the dissonances. The film’s exploration of the ways in which disillusionment can fuel selfish entitlement is compelling, but the film is too jumbled to do much with it or give our nominal protagonist any kind of an arc.

The Band Wagon (1953) | Directed by Vincente Minnelli

 3.5/5

Vincente Minnelli’s The Band Wagon is a perfectly charming musical that indulges in one of my least favorite tropes – that of the artist’s attempt to make great and meaningful art being pushed aside in favor of creating frivolous entertainment. Fred Astaire gives a fine performance, but without a stronger personality like Ginger Rogers to play off, it quickly becomes the “Fred Show” and doesn’t have enough momentum to sustain it’s nearly two-hour running time. That said, it’s refreshing to see a central romance in a classic Hollywood musical that isn’t started by stalking, and it’s surprisingly honest to have the initial antagonism sparked by their mutual artistic insecurities. The musical numbers are a lot of fun, and the noir-tinged dream ballet is an absolute treat.

Marwencol (2010) | Directed by Jeffrey Malmberg

 4.5/5

Jeff Malmberg’s Marwencol is a poignant, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting documentary profile of outsider artist Mark Hogencamp who has created a scale model of a World War II town with highly detailed miniatures in order to heal – physically and emotionally – from terrible trauma. While the film’s focus is primarily on one individual’s journey toward wholeness, it does touch on issues of personal identity and the brokenness of our health care system in some profoundly moving ways. The film is structured around the stories Hogencamp tells about the town, a story that mirrors his real-life recovery, and Malmberg captures Hogencamp’s vulnerability in ways that are beautiful and surprising.

The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) | Directed by John Schlesinger

 4/5

John Schlesinger’s The Falcon and the Snowman is a solid, thoroughly engaging espionage drama. Even though the thriller elements are subsumed by the true-life drama, Schlesinger still manages to use the visual language of spy thrillers (deep shadows, unexpected reveals, long zoom shoots) to place the film firmly in the lineage of past genre classic. The spy-craft depicted here is grounded, simple and rudimentary, and the storytelling is similarly simple and matter-of-fact. This combination of techniques helps what on the surface seems like fabricated fantasy to feel plausible. Both Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn give great performances, and the ways in which their youthful ideals, cynicism with those in power, and a little touch of that good-ol’ American greed combine to lead them into treason makes for a compelling and tragic film.